Is loneliness a psychological dysfunction? A literary study of the phenomenon of loneliness.

The purpose of this investigation was to explore how loneliness is described in literature and research. The study employed a hermeneutic approach rooted in the ideology of humanistic science in a caritative nursing tradition. Data sampling for the study was completed over two different periods of time (1998 and 2004). The main findings are that loneliness is understood as a complex dimension in our lives and it can be experienced at many levels. Through the survey of the theoretical material, loneliness may be understood as a structural dimension of existence and not as an illness. The deep dimension of loneliness, however, can entail suffering that is possibly so intolerable that it may turn towards becoming an illness. Loneliness is assumed as something we are, an ontological structure in our existence. Loneliness can therefore be turned into suffering as well as into health. It is perhaps in the silent reflective loneliness that we paradoxically develop a greater understanding of the benefits of togetherness. Our conclusion is therefore, that the phenomenon of loneliness is not a psychological dysfunction.